Sasaki's work has been exhibited across Canada, at institutions including The McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg, Ont.), which oversaw an eight-venue touring show (Homage, 2020-present); The National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Ont.); The Esker Foundation (Calgary, Alb.); and The Rooms (St. John's, Nfld.). International venues have included The Canadian Embassy in Japan (Tokyo) and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea. He has presented durational performance projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the LIVE Performance Art Biennale (Vancouver, B.C.); Toronto's Nuit Blanche, Edmonton's Nuit Blanche, and The Toronto Dance Theatre. Continuing an involvement in participatory events that began with his membership in the Toronto/Vancouver-based art collective Instant Coffee (2002-2007), he has created one-night, event-based participatory projects for the Gardiner Museum (Toronto), Massive Party (The Art Gallery of Ontario), and Operanation (Canadian Opera Company, Toronto). Over the last 10 years Sasaki has maintained a sustained output of public art commissions, both collaboratively and independently, for the City of Mississauga; Toronto's Waterfront; Sheridan College; the Toronto Transit Commission; the City of Barrie, Ontario; and an upcoming anti-monument for the City of Vancouver's Public Art Program. Sasaki gratefully acknowledges the support of Koyama Provides and the Canada Council of the Arts.
Widely known as a "Romantic conceptualist," Sasaki's many projects, videos, photographs, performances, objects and installations often revolve around trying to reach dubious goals through perversely optimistic means. Sasaki seems to court failure as a richer, more revealing outcome than the soundest of victories. His tragicomic endeavours, ridiculous as they might be, are propelled by a warm, positivist worldview, particularly if the works involve, as they often do, a collaborative audience or cohorts willing to work towards whatever absurd (or noble) premise the artist has set his studied sights upon. The humour and fallibility embedded in his various works are anchored by a methodical, reasoned approach, in the same vein as the sight gags and complex scenes in a Buster Keaton film. In Sasaki's hands, expectation and outcome never seem to align, generating a simultaneous sense of pathos and levity.
